


dinner and a show

by theredhoodie



Series: we're heroes [1]
Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Fan creation, F/M, Fluff and Danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-02-01 01:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12693798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredhoodie/pseuds/theredhoodie
Summary: (A companion fic to "we could be heroes, me and you".) A year after the events in The Gifted, Clarice and John are on a stakeout-slash-date, when the SS Hounds show up and all hell breaks loose.





	dinner and a show

**Author's Note:**

> So I decided to fill in the 6 year gap between The Gifted S1 and my fanon universe I created within my fic "we could be heroes, me and you"! There will be a series of Thunderblink fics building their relationship through the years, all collected in this handy dandy little series. I hope you enjoy some fluff and cuteness to excuse the angsty mess my first Thunderblink fic was!

The door clanked open and Clarice jumped, but it was just John. He had two white bags in his hands, his hair pulled back, and his arms on full display. _God_ _his arms_ …

Clarice forced her eyes to the bags. “Is that Chinese food I smell?”

He nodded, handing her the larger bag. She pulled open the top and inhaled. Warm and freshly made…her mouth instantly watered.

“I never thought I’d be so happy to eat noodles,” she said, setting the bag on the makeshift table and pulling out a folded to-go container. She snapped chopsticks apart and dug in. She really should be keeping a watch out of the window, but she was so hungry that she couldn’t think of actually not being able to enjoy this food.

He watched her, an amused look tugging up the corners of his mouth.

“What?” she asked after a few minutes, hoping she didn’t have soy sauce on her face or something. She paused to grab a napkin and glanced outside. Somehow, they always seemed to have time alone together in a warehouse. It was very quickly becoming _their thing_. She found that she didn’t really care. It was nice to get away from the HQ, away from Dreamer, just _away_.

“Nothing,” he said, putting down his own container of food and reaching for the smaller bag. “I got you something.”

Arching an eyebrow, Clarice put down her food and reached for the bag. It was light. She opened the top and unexpectedly chuckled. “Are you trying to woo me, John?” she asked, looking up from the sugar coated jelly donut sitting at the bottom of the bag, a little bit of the filling dripping out the side.

“That depends.”

“On what?

“Is it working?”

He smiled and she smiled.

(They really should be paying attention to outside. This was a stakeout. But it was also a date, wasn’t it? Or at least, the closest thing to a date that two mutants could have these days.)

She reached into the bag and pulled out the donut. It wasn’t warm, but it smelled divine. Taking a bite, she made a show of debating the goodness scale of the pastry, head tilted back, eyes skyward. “It’s a start,” she said finally, licking sugar off her lips and continuing to take bites out of the donut.

He stepped up to the window to look out, continuing eating the meat and veggies in his container.

“Do you want some?” Clarice asked, the last bite of her donut left. It had a significant amount of jelly in it, and the fact she was willing to give it up was pretty much an affirmation of how much she actually cared about him.

“No, thank you.”

“No?”

“I’m not really a sweets person.”

She shrugged. “Your loss.” She popped the last bite into her mouth and turned her eyes toward the outside world. It was easy to forget that they weren’t protected here; this wasn’t the HQ. This was two mutants against a world that wanted them dead or imprisoned.

They stood in relatively comfortable silence for a few moments, nibbling food and keeping a watch out. Clarice kept reminding herself to not let her eyes drift from the outside to John. But it was so easy to catch a glimpse of his profile or the shadows defining his arms or…

“Clarice,” John said, breaking the silence.

“Mmm?” She turned, thankful for the excuse to look at him directly.

He opened his mouth to speak, his face relaxed and then _a moment_ happened, his eyes coming to a strange focus in the distance, his body visibly tensing. 

Normally she’d be pissed at someone stopping mid-sentence, but this was _John_ and they were on a stakeout trying to find out more about the Hounds. She knew well enough to trust his mutant abilities.

“What is it?” she asked.

He set down his food and squinted out the window before nearly stumbling back, grabbing her elbow on the way. “We have to go,” he said.

“What happened?” she asked as they moved farther into the building. The gravel and loose concrete on the floor started to shake and rise.

“They have a tracker.”

“Shit,” she hissed. Without him needing to ask, she paused, squinting out the far off window. Sparks formed between her hands and the portal grew just large enough for them to go through. They appeared on the roof across the street, which wasn’t far enough but it gave them a moment.

“This isn’t good,” John said under his breath, his hand on her back as they crouched in the darkness, watching three people walking along the street.

“Are those all mutants?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

“Jesus,” she gasped. Sentinel Services was getting more and more mutants every day. Kidnapping, experimenting on, brainwashing them and forcing them to help hunt their own kind.

The building stopped rumbling across the way, which was bad.

“We have to go.”

“Where?”

“Far.”

“John…” Could they really just roof hop until they got away? What kind of tracker did they have? Would she have enough energy to keep them going so that they weren’t captured or followed back to base?

On the street below, someone screamed. The building shook under their feet. The ground slid from beneath them as the building starting to crumble from the bottom up.

John grabbed Clarice around the waist and they ran to the edge of the building. She didn’t have enough time to portal them, so he jumped, keeping his grip on her tightly. He landed with a tremor, absorbing the impact and leaving behind a crater. She yelped when they hit ground but took off running through the dark alleys beside him. She needed to be somewhere safe for at least twenty seconds to make a portal, and she could still only go as far as she could see unless she wanted to get sick again.

“Where are we going?” she asked between panting breaths, her feet slapping on asphalt. The ground trembled beneath them.

John kept them going the safest route, sensing ahead, but knowing that the Hounds were starting to circle them to box them in. “We have to get far enough for them to stop tracking us,” he said, skidding over a puddle and pulling her down an alley. It was blocked by a chain link fence they could easily scale if they didn’t have time to portal out. “Can you get us somewhere?”

She had chosen this mission, she chose to stay at the HQ, to stay with him and to let him mend the trust between them. He trusted her more than she allowed herself to trust him, but maybe that had to _finally_ give. “I can try,” she nodded, concentrating. He stepped back to give her room and tried not to give away the urgency of the situation. She put trust in him to keep her safe so they could portal away; they both knew she was as vulnerable as ever when she was using her power.

Clarice took a deep breath and a portal appeared in between her hands. It grew quickly, but then the ground buckled beneath them as if it were water. She stumbled, and he caught her to steady her.

“Keep going,” he told her, turning to face the end of the alley. No one was there yet, but he could sense them coming closer: the tracker, the one with a connection to the earth and the third one that wasn’t sure about yet.

Her portal flickered as she searched for anywhere to jump to. Everywhere was too close. She ground her teeth together in frustration.

The Hounds appeared in the alleyway and John stood between them and Clarice. They didn’t say a word, eerily silent with skin that was pale and ashen and bruised. John clenched his jaw as the third, unknown mutant, opened his mouth and a blast hit him square in the chest, sending him back against the alley wall and leaving Clarice open to attack.

She saw the blast, and something spiked deep within her.

John shook off the hit and pulled a heavy metal dumpster away from the brick and used it as a shield to catch the next sonic blast. His feet sunk into the ground and the metal bent around his hands.

Power bloomed inside of Clarice, filling her up like a dam had broken. She let out a cry and the portal opened wider, slicing through layers of space like a knife. “John!” she yelled just as the ground started to shake.

The portals didn’t look like her usual portals, the other side waving and shifting. He hesitated.

“Trust me,” she said through gritted teeth, just as the Hound took another breath, ready to send out another sonic boom.

John jumped through the portal, landing in a thin sliver of space before passing through another portal and a third. Clarice followed, just before the dumpster flew into the fence right where she’d been standing.

They both stumbled right into the middle of HQ, amid gasps and startled noises. It felt as if someone had hooked a line around Clarice’s abdomen and had yanked. She swayed as faces crowded around them, but she focused on John’s astonished expression.

“Clarice?” he said, his voice quiet and firm, his hands on her shoulders. “How did you do that?”

“I have no idea,” she breathed out before fainting.

*

When she woke up, she was in her bed this time. The HQ wasn’t in pieces, and she didn’t feel as drained as she had from the time when she portalled a few miles about a year ago and almost destroyed the entire Mutant Underground facility. She wasn’t hooked up to an IV and if her clock was right, she’d only been asleep for half a day.

She took her time standing up, and shuffled over to the mirror in the corner of the room that was crowded with beds, most of which were empty. The sun was shining outside. She stepped up to the mirror and sighed. Another new mark had appeared above her left eyebrow, a small, sharp curve like a talon. She touched the skin. It felt normal, and yet there it was, another beauty mark to show how many times she’d overstretched her abilities.

There was nothing she could do about it, so she fixed her hair to cover her ears and walked into the corridor. The HQ wasn’t up in arms, so apparently the new Hound tracker hadn’t traced her portal back here. Thankful for that, she walked slowly through the familiar building searching for John.

She didn’t find him on her initial search, but found Lauren Strucker, who was still here, amid her mutant brethren. Long ago, she’d decided that this was her new normal. Andy stayed too, even after Caitlin and Reed left for Mexico to try to bring the heat away from Atlanta just a month before.

“You’re awake,” Lauren said, spotting Clarice. The young mutant’s eyes flickered over her new marking.

“Yeah. I’m looking for John. Do you know where he is?”

“He was up all night making sure the Hounds didn’t find us. He’s probably sleeping.” She paused. “Are you feeling okay? Do you want any food or anything?”

Clarice wasn’t particularly hungry. “Is there any coffee? I’ll be back in a minute.”

Lauren nodded. “Okay!”

Clarice walked away, her stomach twisting when her eyes slid over the form of Dreamer, who had her back to her and was talking to Sage. Clarice clenched her jaw and quickly disappeared down a hall. The HQ was so filled with refugees that the only people who had their own room anymore were Polaris and Eclipse and their daughter. John’s former room was filled with five other beds, but they were all empty now.

John was lying on the far side of the room, an arm tossed over his eyes. She didn’t know if he was sleeping, but she wanted to talk about what happened and he was the only person she felt like talking to right now.

Hovering at the door, she was about to knock lightly on the doorframe when he shifted and turned his head toward the door. The exhausted, exasperated look on his face fell when he saw who it was. “Clarice,” he said, pushing himself up.

“Hey,” she said, making her way inside and sitting on the edge of his mattress.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Somehow.”

He nodded. “Your powers are expanding. It’s normal for mutant abilities to grow the more you use them.”

“Thanks, Mr. Miyagi,” she joked.

He half smiled. “Seriously, how are you feeling? Do you know how you did that thing with the portals?”

She pressed her palms against the mattress on either side of her knees. “I don’t know exactly. It was like I tapped into a reserve of power.”

“You portalled us from another city,” he said, his voice gentle and worried.

“I know! I didn’t even need to see where we were going. Maybe it’s because I have a strong connection to the HQ. I just instinctively made multiple portals across the distance to get us here quickly.” She took in a deep breath and let it out.

“It worked,” he said, putting his hand gently against her back, between her shoulderblades. “The Hounds didn’t track us here. We’re safe, again, because of you.”

Clarice accepted the compliment. She dragged her eyes away from the floor and turned a little to face him. His hand, warm and sturdy, slid down her spine. “Next time, I pick the date spot.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Was that a date?”

Clarice rolled her eyes and leaned forward to kiss him, pushing down the fake memory knocking around in her mind. She kissed him because she wanted to, and he kissed her back because he wanted to. It was better than any implanted memory because it was _real_.

“Consider me a little bit wooed,” she said once they broke apart, faces close. All of this was real, real, _real_. The trill in her stomach, the way she felt ignited, there was no faking this.

A tiny bit of doubt crept up, waiting for him to tell her they couldn’t do _this_ , that they couldn’t mix a relationship with work because look what happened when Lorna got taken and Marcos nearly got the bunch of them captured…but he didn’t say any of those things.

“I’m sorry,” he said instead, twisting a magenta lock around his fingers.

“I know.” She rested her hand against his neck, the newfound intimacy exhilarating and frightening all at once.

What happened before, with Dreamer and the memory and the lies, that would always be there, in their past. But Clarice wanted to stay here, and she was pretty sure her feelings for him were entirely her own. That’s why she gave herself a year, to make really sure. And she knew that’s exactly why John hadn’t gone forward with anything until _she_ decided it was time.

Trust was a hard bridge to rebuild, but they’d done it. Or at least, they’d patched it up and were busy reinforcing it.

Clarice swallowed and scooted a way a few inches. “You should be sleeping. Lauren told me you were up all night.”

“This is nice too.” He was more relaxed now than she’d seen him in a long time.

Butterflies reminded her that _she_ was the reason. “You’re not Superman, you need rest.”

He waved a hand in the air in protest.

“I can come get you later, if you want,” she reasoned with him, standing and putting a bit more distance between them.

He propped himself up on an elbow. “Sure.”

She hesitated, considered staying, chastised herself and started walking out of the room. She paused at the doorway, holding onto it with her hands and she turned back into the room. He was still watching her. She playfully glared at him. “Close your eyes! There’s nothing to see here.” With that, she slipped into the hall, her cheeks flushed, feeling more at home here at the HQ than ever before.


End file.
